Page 140 of Scoring Lessons

FORTY

WESLEY

OLD STORIES.

I’d been staring at the small watercolor painting on the wall for the past ten minutes.

It was nothing special, but it was better than looking at Dr. Smith, who was sitting across from me with a black journal on her knee and a patient expression that made me feel like she had nowhere else to be and all the time in the world to wait me out.

The office was small but had a warm welcoming feel to it. Two armchairs sat angled toward each other, a low table between them with a box of tissues. A bookshelf along one wall was crammed with titles I couldn’t read from here, and a single window with the blinds half drawn let in a strip of gray afternoon light.

It smelled faintly like eucalyptus, and it instantly made me release some of the tension I’d been carrying on my shoulders.

I didn’t know what I’d expected. Something more clinical, maybe. Colder. Something that matched how I felt about being here.

This was a mistake. A stupid, idiotic mistake.

“You can start whenever you feel comfortable,” Dr. Smith said. She had a calm voice—one that probably worked well on people who were more willing to be here than I was.

I pulled the back of my neck, my lips pursing in doubt. “I don’t really know where that is.”

“That’s okay.” She gave me a kind smile that released more tension from my body. “Why don’t you tell me what made you call?”

I shifted in the chair. “A friend gave me your card.” I turned it over in my fingers before I realized I was still holding it and set it on the table. “He said therapy had helped him.” Even if he hadn’t outright told me, the changes had been noticeable. The old Henry would have never apologized for lashing out at me. The old Henry would have used his fists to talk instead of words.

“And what are you hoping it does for you?”

I looked at the watercolor again. Blues and greens bleeding into each other at the edges, nothing sharp, nothing defined.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just know that the way things are going and the way I’ve been going…” I exhaled through my nose. “Something has to change.”

She nodded. “Can you tell me a little about what’s been going on?”

That was the part I hadn’t prepared for. I’d driven here telling myself I’d give her the surface stuff. Clean, manageable things with clear beginnings and ends.

Instead what came out was: “I ended things with someone I’m in love with because I convinced myself I wasn’t going to be enough for her.”

She nodded. “Why do you think that?”

I didn’t know how to explain it in a way that made sense, so I just started talking and let it come out however it wanted to.

I told her about the season. The pressure that had been building since October—Michael feeding me bad information, the contract hanging over everything like a countdown I couldn’t stop. How I’d been playing tight all year, second-guessing every shift, every decision on the ice. How that had bled into everything else until I couldn’t separate hockey from the rest of it. I told her about these ever-growing thoughts of self-doubt and never feeling good enough for anything—or anyone, for that matter.

“I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere.” The truth had been hard to admit out loud. Still, there was this consuming need to be honest. To lay myself bare to someone who didn’t know me. “I’ve been playing professional hockey for five years, and I still wait for someone to figure out I don’t belong.” I shook my head and stared at my hands, studying the cracks of my calloused hands—the same hands that had allowed me to do what I love for a living for so long. “So if I don’t belong anywhere, how on Earth can I belong with someone?”

I’d only been something temporary for most of my life. Detroit didn’t see the value in me and traded me in an instant. I’d kept most relationships physical, because that was all women wanted from me. Because, deep down, that was all I thought I was worthy of.

Until Olivia showed me the possibilities of what could be.

“Even after a championship?”

“Especially after.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “Because then there’s proof. Actual proof that I could do it. And instead of feeling like relief, it just—raised the stakes. Now, more than ever, I have something to lose.”

“And that feels familiar,” she commented. “That fear of losing something good.”

I looked at her and nodded.

“Do you think that’s why you broke things off with her?”